We drink water and eat salt. Aside from the taste, why can we drink sea water?
A search on “drink salt water” in Yahoo!’s ever-ready search box linked us to Water Science for Schools, an educational site from the USGS (United States Geological Survey). There we learned the difference between salt water, which contains concentrations of dissolved salts, and fresh water. Salinity is usually measured by the weight or amount of salt contained in water expressed as “parts per million” or ppm. Water is considered highly saline if it contains anywhere from 10,000-35,000 ppm of dissolved salts. Water is considered fresh if it contains less than 1,000 ppm of salt. In some regions of the United States, slightly saline water is used for tasks like crop irrigation. In regions where an abundant supply of clean, fresh water is difficult to come by, desalinization technologies convert seawater to drink
